


Der Schachdrache

by RookSacrifice



Series: DPOD Oneshots [2]
Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Oneshot, chess will always be Kaiba's game, gratuitous applications of chess jargon, sorry Atem
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-15
Updated: 2021-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-23 06:22:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30051249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RookSacrifice/pseuds/RookSacrifice
Summary: Kaiba finds a new rival in something other than Duel Mosters...
Relationships: Atem/Kaiba Seto, Kaiba Seto/Yami Yuugi
Series: DPOD Oneshots [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2210037
Comments: 8
Kudos: 30
Collections: Dark Pride of Dimensions Drabble Night Collection





	Der Schachdrache

O P E N I N G S

“Hey, Atem? Do you mind stopping… whatever it is that you’re doing?” Yuugi stole away from battling the compiler and threw pleading eyes in his direction before massaging the furrow out of his brow and rubbing his temples with his fingertips. Atem arrested the clicking plunger on the pen and the tapping of his feet against the wooden bed frame. 

“Sorry, Aibou…” He grumbled, narrowly resisting the urge to pick up his impatient fidgeting again. “How much longer do you have to work?”

“Until it’s finished,” Yuugi sighed, leaning back against his chair and loosening some of the tension that had crept into his shoulders.

“Hmm…” Atem nodded knowingly, staring at a single fixed point in the ceiling where a knick in the drywall had taken up residence. 

“You’re bored.” 

“I am keeping you company while you work. It’s too late to be up by yourself.” Atem was so bored his brain ached from atrophy.

Yuugi plucked Atem’s galaxy purple KC-branded cell phone off the bedside table. The one Kaiba had deigned to gift him in a mystifyingly magnanimous show of generosity. The one with the factory-shipped screen protection film still unpeeled and untouched. 

“You know, this does a lot more than make a good paperweight,” Yuugi opened the game store app, searching for something more intellectually stimulating than candy crush. 

“Screen is tiny. Too many buttons,” Atem yawned. He curled up like a cat, mussing the comforter and struggling to be a good friend and stay awake as promised. 

“Technically there are no buttons,” Yuugi settled for a chess app.

“I will never share your knack for technology,”  _ Or Kaiba’s…  _ He added miserably to himself. 

“Here,” Yuugi replaced the clicker pen in his hands with the phone. “You can play chess. I promise I’ll finish up soon and we can do something fun tomorrow.”

Atem nodded, but he was already engrossed in his first virtual match. 

N O V E L T Y

The board table only sat twenty-five people, but Ito-San had rolled in extra chairs from another room to make it work. That didn’t mean the HVAC was built for seven hours of hot-aired windbags running their mouths in a room packed beyond maximum capacity. Kaiba resisted the urge to loosen his tie. 

A young quant they fished out of the finance department was spouting off about stock prices breaking out above the two-hundred day moving average with the latest release, but Kaiba wasn’t interested. He silently drummed his fingers against the underside of the mahogany table top. He was so bored his head felt like an egg ready to crack on the frying pan. 

He dug his ice blue KC-branded cell phone out of his suit jacket and opened up the chess app and edited the match settings to look for opponents at an amateur elo. Trouncing nobodies in a blitzkrieg of minimal moves would be entertaining enough to tide him over and not brain straining enough to be distracting. 

He got matched with  _ MagiciansGambit _ and drew black. White e4. The natural opening. Kaiba played Sicillian, Najdorf Variation. The natural answer.

The game rapidly dissolved into chaos. His opponent evidently lacked any semblance of classical training, never making any of the expected and well-worn moves, but they were never blunders or hard errors. The theoretical novelty itself presented its own form of challenge. Kaiba weaseled his way out of an attempted Arabian mate, if his opponent even knew what that meant, with his own countergambit. Mate in 36. A far longer game than he anticipated for an unranked match…

“Mr. Kaiba?”  
“Umm… Mr. Kaiba?”

He looked up from his phone to find the table cleared out, save for his secretary who opted to hide her embarrassment with a deep bow.

“Mr. Kaiba, if you would, we are adjourning for lunch.”

U N P I N N I N G

“Arrghh!” Atem winged the cell phone across the sofa, luckily pegging the cushions instead of sending it overboard and careening into the wall.

“I know Kaiba builds his technology to last, but I’m not sure he’d replace that if he knew you broke it on purpose,” Yuugi laughed, looking up from his own video game on the TV. They’d spent their lazy Friday hanging around the apartment above the game shop in their pajamas, with nowhere to be but each other’s company. 

Atem didn’t answer, opting instead to grumble under his breath and copy down the moves of the latest game in his notebook in furious script. 

“What’s wrong?” Yuugi paused his game and moved to get up before Atem answered.

“I lost…” He had a thick tome titled  _ The 250 Chess Games for Every Master to Memorize  _ set out on the coffee table, thumbing through the pages in hopes of finding one with the sequence he fell unwitting prey to. Yuugi laughed harder this time.

“Don’t you get bored of  _ always  _ winning? Doesn’t that spoil the fun after a while?” He turned back to his own distractions. Atem didn’t need comfort for this brand of stewing.

“No?” He said, a mix of confusion and disbelief before settling for stern resolve. “This is my only loss. It won’t happen again.”

“You know…” Yuugi had a devilish smirk. “If you want to get better at chess, you  _ could _ ask Kaiba. I think he’s a Grandmaster or something.”

“Absolutely not!” Atem’s cheeks burned red hot and he drew his knees up to his chest.

“If you want Kaiba to see you as more than just a rival, you can’t keep avoiding him forever,” Yuugi teased. “And no. Dueling doesn’t count.”

“He would think less of me for my losses…” Atem hid his despondent expression in the pages of the book.

“How many times has Kaiba lost to you?” Yuugi said.

“That’s different!” He thumbed at the pages and didn’t look up. “I cannot challenge Kaiba until I can prove myself as his equal.”

“You want to impress him, don’t you?” Yuugi’s ribbing grin spread impossibly broad. 

Atem nodded furiously and managed to retreat deeper into the sofa cushions in his rosy embarrassment.

D E V E L O P M E N T 

Kaiba was up late in the R&D lab when his phone buzzed twice in a pattern that wasn’t Mokuba’s. He was picky with what notifications he let through on his personal line. No time for paltry pleasantries and critical issues could be stemmed and filtered through the appropriate chain of command before ever reaching his number. He whipped the phone out of his pocket and tossed it beside the soldering iron.

Oh. He’d forgotten to turn off notifications on his chess account.

09:56 PM  _ MagiciansGambit requests a match. _ _  
_ 11:24 PM  _ MagiciansGambit requests a match. _

Respectable persistence. Kaiba’s thumb lingered for a fraction of a second over the dismiss button, but he figured he could use a stimulating break and a victory to stroke his ego.

Kaiba drew black. Again. His opponent didn’t stew nearly as long this time on his opening moves. White: g3, Bg2. Fianchettoed the king’s bishop. The Hungarian Opening. He’d done some research since their last game and Kaiba smiled to himself. No more amateur hour tricks then, this game would be serious. He fell into his favored defense: Sicillian, dragon variation.

_ MagiciansGambit _ played straight from the book through the opening, and Kaiba sighed, finding himself marginally disappointed to see some of his opponent’s admirable attempts at cunning and creativity stifled in his attempts to memorize the classics. It was a common problem for beginners. By the middlegame, Kaiba had chased him into unfamiliar positioning in an attempt to coax it back out of him.

He satisfied Kaiba’s curiosity with a wild coffeehouse gambit, sacrificing much needed material for...control of the center? Perhaps, but he was losing positional coverage. Kaiba wrinkled his nose, nearly running out the turn timer in an effort to parse the purpose of the move. A blunder perhaps. He took the bait.

Four turns later, Kaiba found himself pinned in a well-spun trap, costing him a rook and his queen. His frustration was boiling over. Playtime is over, he was ready to end this. Kaiba won with a classic back rank mate, a punishment for failing to adequately develop the left flank. 

Victory smelled like… burning plastic? He looked up to find the long forgotten soldering iron burning a hole in the table.   
  
“Shit!” He cursed, fanning aside the fumes. When he looked back at his phone, there was a new notification.

_ Friend request: MagiciansGambit _ _  
_ Kaiba accepted.

R E F U T A T I O N

Yuugi had coerced him into coming out for drinks, but Atem still found the blinding lights and the loud music overwhelming sensations in his new body. He made the effort to laugh along with Jou and Honda’s semi-drunken banter and tried to enjoy the company of his friends despite the atmosphere. Yuugi was chewing on his drink straw and stealing glances across the table, locked in an internal debate on whether to ask Anzu to dance. Atem was praying for a suitable distraction when he was blessed with the rare phone notification.

10:38 PM  _ Schachdrache requests a match. _

Atem’s face lit up in secret delight and he ordered another beer.

He played black this time, and he was grateful. White may have the advantage but he was looking forward to a chance to test the defenses he’d been studying. Atem slipped into his own world, bowing out of the conversation and nestling into the corner of the booth with his drink and his phone, shutting out the noise of the bar.

Atem hadn’t noticed the chat box under the board until he’d begun receiving curt notes at the end of his longer matches thanking him for a  _ good game.  _ He’d never received one from  _ Schachdrache.  _ He chewed his lip in thought, wondering whether it was out of etiquette to start a conversation. After his second drink he settled for the unintrusive:

**_MagiciansGambit  
_ ** _ Hey _

No reply. Atem tried not to feel slighted, but it was difficult when he was once again losing the upper hand to his mysterious online rival. Thinking that to himself rang with a hint of betrayal.  _ Kaiba  _ was his rival, and he was possessive of that title. He couldn’t be sure whether he was even playing this game to perfect his skills for his own benefit or to impress him, the line between those notions was beginning to blur. He tried to bait his opponent into a response.

**_MagiciansGambit  
_ ** _ It’s Saturday night, you could be out having a good time. _

**_MagiciansGambit  
_ ** _ Maybe this *is* your idea of a good time? _

Still no reply… The endgame was closing in, Atem could see his next loss now, mate in four, and there was little he could do to thwart it but he had enough respect to play it out to the end. 

**_MagiciansGambit  
_ ** _ Mine too _

**_MagiciansGambit  
_ ** _ Good game _

“Who are you texting?” Yuugi leaned over the back of the booth to steal a glance at his phone.

“No one!” Atem snapped, clutching his phone to his chest to hide the screen.

E Q U A L I Z E R

It was almost time for Kaiba to leave work and Isono would be pulling up outside the office in the towncar any moment. Kaiba sat at his desk with his chin on his steepled fingers, glaring at his phone screen.  _ MagiciansGambit _ was late. He’d received an invite from the mysterious challenger like clockwork every evening as he was leaving for the past several weeks. He undoubtedly suspected Kaiba was some deadbeat salaryman. Cute.

Kaiba considered sending a request himself, but that would make their arrangement far too concrete and far too close to begrudging respect and friendship. It was much too generous to call  _ MagiciansGambit _ a  _ rival,  _ Kaiba only had one  _ rival,  _ and it was a betrayal to hand the title out to anyone else. Especially someone who’d lost every match between them thus far. Not that Kaiba had beaten Atem, either, but that was different.

Still, there was a familiarity to his playstyle. Emphasis on board control that perfectly stifled Kaiba’s preferred rapid development and beatdown approach. Traps laid turns in advance and sprung only in the most desperate moments…

Isono buzzed his office from the ground floor. It would be a dull ride home tonight. 

If Kaiba hadn’t still been up answering emails, he would have missed the notification. 

01:32 AM  _ MagiciansGambit requests a match. _

**_MagiciansGambit  
_ ** _ Can’t sleep? _

**_MagiciansGambit  
_ ** _ Me neither. _

Kaiba sighed and set his phone to silent. His mystery challenger had taken to running his mouth in a stream of consciousness in the chat while they played. When he was up it was nothing but mindless rapidfire chatter. When he fell behind on material, he’d run every turn timer down to the wire with his multi-paragraph philosophical theses. The ping sounds were nothing more than a distraction from his focus. Kaiba never replied.

Late to the game or not,  _ MagiciansGambit  _ showed up to play with an entirely new and unexpected strategy. Kaiba’s fatal error had been accepting the Benko Gambit to begin with, although his opponent only tangentially stuck with the classical play. White swallowed Kaiba’s backward d6 pawn, leaving him vulnerable to all of white’s passed pawns. Tricky move. Kaiba nearly ran his turn timer out three times in a row, struggling to recall any similar games now that his familiar opening had been suitably shattered. He launched an aggressive counter assault on the center to maneuver for a potential queenside mate, but white had the decisive advantage.

At almost five in the morning, just as the sun was peeking its head through the bedroom blinds, Kaiba found his king pinned in the corner. Checkmate. He waited for the inevitable gloating, but all he received in return was:

**_MagiciansGambit  
_ ** _ You fought well. _

Z W I S C H E N S C H A C H

On Monday, Kaiba packed up from work without checking his phone.  _ MagiciansGambit  _ hadn’t sent him any further requests over the weekend. He had his victory now, and Kaiba supposed he had at last gotten what he came for. In a fit of brooding rage and curiosity, Kaiba had traced his opponent’s IP address following their final match. 

Domino City.

He spent the entirety of the past two days chewing on the identity of the mysterious challenger. Kaiba had faced down every worthy opponent in the city in one tournament or another, high school championships, adult league opens, exhibition matches… He’d never lost a single one. He was still festering in the depths of his frustration on the drive home when he received the notification.

05:08 PM  _ MagiciansGambit requests a match. _

It would be unbecoming to describe his reaction as ‘elated surprise.’ Kaiba smiled and resettled in his seat. 

**_Schachdrache  
_ ** _ Decided not to rest on your laurels or are you simply a glutton for punishment? _

**_MagiciansGambit  
_ ** _ It wouldn’t be much of a rivalry if I always lost, would it? _

Kaiba frowned at that.

**_Schachdrache  
_ ** _ We aren’t rivals. _

**_MagiciansGambit  
_ ** _ Aren’t we? _

**_Schachdrache  
_ ** _ It’s your move. _

Kaiba hopped out of the car and made a beeline for the cocktail bar and his leather office chair, forgoing his usual detour of hounding Mokuba to get out of the game room and start his homework. If his brother noticed, he made the sly call to turn the other cheek. 

**_MagiciansGambit  
_ ** _ I was beginning to suspect you didn’t speak Japanese. _

**_Schachdrache  
_ ** _ I was beginning to suspect you’d never shut up. Only one of us was correct. _

**_MagiciansGambit  
_ ** _ Snippy. Bad day at work, dear? _

**_Schachdrache  
_ ** _ Wouldn’t you like to know. _

**_MagiciansGambit  
_ ** _ I do. That’s why I asked. It’s what friends do. _

**_Schachdrache  
_ ** _ I’m not interested in having friends to slow me down. _

**_MagiciansGambit  
_ ** _ How sad. _

Kaiba reclaimed his victorious title in time for dinner.

**_MagiciansGambit  
_ ** _ Enjoy your evening. _

A T T R A C T I O N 

**Bd2**

Do you ever loosen your tie and experiment with something more dynamic?

\-- _ MagiciansGambit _

**Bf6**

No. Kramnik vs Kasparov, 1994. Learn that positioning.

\-- _ Schachdrache _

**Nce2**

Didn’t work out so well for him against Karpov. Know your enemy, not your position. I am a proponent of a flexible game.

\-- _ MagiciansGambit _

**Rg8**

Try learning the rules before you break them.

\-- _ Schachdrache _

**Kh1**

I prefer a creative application of the rules.

\-- _ MagiciansGambit _

**Bxd4**

So you’re a cheat and a scoundrel? Perhaps we should quit playing.

\-- _ Schachdrache _

**Nxd4**

I play an honorable game, but there is nothing unethical about studying the meta. Isn’t that the entire mind sport of chess?

\-- _ MagiciansGambit _

**Qe7**

Then what game are you referring too?

\-- _ Schachdrache _

**b4**

This is Domino. What game is there other than duel monsters? If you don’t duel, perhaps we  _ should _ part ways. 

\-- _ MagiciansGambit _

Atem fumbled with the lock on his PO Box, ripping it open in his excitement to withdraw his latest postcard and assess the move.

“Yes!” His face lit up in glee, thrilled to find his opponent was readily falling into his quietly woven snare.

“Why do you mail postcards back and forth if you already play against this guy almost every day?” Yuugi waited patiently in the lobby for Atem to finish staring down his encoded message.

“Those are blitz games. Correspondence chess leaves more time for thought between moves,” Atem said.

“How do you know he isn’t cheating and asking for help?”

“Consulting a second? We agreed not to,” Atem smiled. “And he has the spirit of an honorable duelist.”

“Can I see that for a second?” Yuugi was spying over his shoulder. Atem was reluctant to release the note, it felt too personal, but handed it over for his partner’s scrutiny.

**Nh2**

If you duel anything like you play, you’re best sticking with skittles. I’d hate to send you home crying.

\-- _ Schachdrache _

“Hey! I think this guy works at KaibaCorp, the return address is the same as the game shop shipments,” Yuugi said.

“Hmmm…” Atem frowned. “That doesn’t narrow it down much, Kaiba employs half the city.”

“You could  _ ask  _ him,” Yuugi smirked and handed back the post card. “I’m sure he keeps records on which of his employees hold chess titles in his surveillance state files.”

“That would be a betrayal of confidence,” Atem chewed his lip and shuffled his feet. He  _ was  _ dying to know…  _ Schachdrache’s  _ profile was sparse, nothing besides the bare minimum information that he was in his twenties and based out of Japan, not even a profile picture. “He will tell me when he feels comfortable.”

K R I E G S P I E L 

Kaiba had the longest day he’d experienced in several months by a large margin. It was a Saturday. It was supposed to be a  _ good  _ day, or the closest approximation of one his life would allow for. He’d carefully pencilled in a free afternoon to invite Atem to the R&D lab for a duel with the latest Solid Vision upgrades. Purely as an exercise before sending the schematics off to production, he assured. Atem didn’t need to read into the black and blue circles under his eyes from staying up late the night prior perfecting all the final details.

They would duel, sure, as always. But this time, he would ask Atem to stay after they were finished. Kaiba spent the better part of the morning working himself up not to shy away from that decision. 

Of course, his gambits never fell together quite as seamlessly as planned.

Kaiba made an admittedly arrogant quip about Atem’s little nerd herd and Atem bit back with a full ninety-five theses on the grievances with their tentative so-called  _ friendship  _ and the day was cut short when Kaiba stormed out of his own lab in a tactical retreat. He couldn’t remember why he’d wanted Atem to stay in the first place.

Thus, the remainder of Kaiba’s afternoon was blown wide open to the emptiness of his own company. A predictable ending, if he’d bothered to think more than two moves ahead. Two. Ten. Twenty-five. It didn’t matter, Atem would always be unpredictable.

The thought of spending another moment in the R&D lab left a bitter taste in his mouth and Kaiba drove himself home instead of calling for Isono. He opted to salvage what was left of the evening by burying himself in the best distraction available.

05:25 PM  _ Schachdrache requests a match. _ _  
_ 05:42 PM  _ Schachdrache requests a match. _

An unexpected development. This was the first time  _ MagiciansGambit  _ had not accepted his invitation almost immediately. Kaiba recalled his early dig about  _ spending Saturday nights out  _ and choked on a pang of something that tasted like embarrassment. He did respond, though. Kaiba wasn’t the only one spending the evening alone.

Kaiba allowed himself to relax and empty his mind of the afternoon’s anxieties still marathoning through his head, but the same could not be said of his opponent. He was consistently running the timer down, with very few fruitful moves to show for it. 

**_Schachdrache  
_ ** _ You’re awfully quiet tonight. _

**_MagiciansGambit  
_ ** _ What happened to pleading for a moment’s peace to think through your turn? _

**_Schachdrache  
_ ** _ It was an observation, not a complaint. _

The timer ran down for black nearly to zero before Kaiba’s move was answered. He tapped his nails against the back of his phone.

**_Schachdrache  
_ ** _ I don’t see why we should bother playing if you aren’t giving this match your full attention. _

The next move followed quicker this time.

**_MagiciansGambit  
_ ** _ My apologies, it has been a long day… I hope that we can play to the end, I find our games to be a welcome distraction. _

‘Long day’ didn’t even begin to cover it, Kaiba thought bitterly.

**_MagiciansGambit  
_ ** _ Do you ever find life to be like a game of chess, in it’s own way? _

Kaiba rarely indulged his opponent’s philosophical tangents, but his mind instantly drifted to his preplotted encounter with Atem, doomed to ignition on first contact with his fiery unpredictability.

**_Schachdrache  
_ ** _ Life? No. People? Yes. _

**_MagiciansGambit  
_ ** _ Sometimes it feels as though I were playing without a view of my opponent’s pieces…  _

**_Schachdrache  
_ ** _ Some players specialize in blind chess. _

**_MagiciansGambit  
_ ** _ I find an honest game has more elegance than cheap novelties. A true master doesn’t need to hold his cards close to his chest. _

**_Schachdrache  
_ ** _ A true master knows his rival’s strategies better than he knows himself. He could beat him drunk and blindfolded. He shouldn’t need to see the board. _

**_MagiciansGambit  
_ ** _ Perhaps you are right, but I find myself playing the same opponent in an unfamiliar game… I am not sure what strategies may translate, and which to leave behind. I fear I am out of my depth. _

**_Schachdrache  
_ ** _ You’re a quick study. Learn the rules as you play. _

**_MagiciansGambit  
_ ** _ Do you suppose you could best me blindfolded? _

**_Schachdrache  
_ ** _ Absolutely. _

**_MagiciansGambit  
_ ** _ Not tonight ;) Mate in three. Shall we play again? _

M A T E 

Atem leaned in close to the mirror, propping his elbow on the counter to get his eyeliner straight. He leaned back to assess his appearance and fiddle with his hair for the fifth time.

“You’re getting awfully dressed up for a chess game in the park…” Yuugi watched from the threshold of the small bathroom doorway.

“First impressions are important,” Atem contemplated the choice to wear his jacket over his shoulders or over his arms, settling for his usual choice. 

“You’ve been playing together for months,” Yuugi said. “What made him decide to invite you for a real game now?”

“Our previous games were no less real,” Atem frowned at his partner’s reflection in the mirror.

“You know what I mean,” Yuugi crossed his arms and had a worried expression. “Are you sure you want to do this? I mean, meeting someone you met online? He could be a serial killer.”

“I’m not sure how many serial killers are also prodigious chess masters,” Atem laughed.

“Bobby Fischer walked a fine line,” Yuugi said. “And I don’t think it’s so far off from serial killing card players.”

“That is behind us,” Atem smiled, pleased at last with his appearance. “And he reminds me of someone…”

“Really? Who?”

“I’m not sure…” Atem chewed his lip for a moment. “But I’m certain it’s a friend.”

Atem arrived at a quiet section of Domino Metro Park on a lazy Thursday afternoon, scoping out the five chess tables from a careful distance beside the lake and stealing casual glances at the patrons. Two of the sets were unoccupied. One was taken up by a young couple dirtying the board with sandwiches and fruit faire as though it were a picnic table. Atem turned his nose up. The shady one was already settled by an old timer working through a crossword puzzle.

The last was taken by… Kaiba? He was scrolling through his phone instead of looking up. Atem spun around to face the lake, in hopes of going unnoticed. He might have been ecstatic to encounter Kaiba in the wild, outside his natural protective habitat, but today was hardly an auspicious time. He opened the chat. Perhaps he’d been stood up.

**_MagiciansGambit  
_ ** _ Should I wait for you? _

**_Schachdrache  
_ ** _ I’m already here. _

**_MagiciansGambit  
_ ** _ I don’t see you… I’m in a black leather jacket. _

**_Schachdrache  
_ ** _ I’m at the second table, white coat. _

Atem spun around slowly, just in time to catch Kaiba’s steely blue stare melt from surprise into a lethal smirk. Atem returned the gesture in kind before sauntering up to take a seat across the board.

“You have dark skin and tri-colored hair and you decide your most distinctive feature is a  _ leather jacket _ ?” Kaiba raked him up and down with his eyes from over crossed arms.

“Your face is plastered on every billboard in Domino, and yet you decide to introduce yourself as ‘man in the white coat’?” Atem teased right back, admiring Kaiba’s more relaxed choice, a trench coat on a level more subdued than his dueling jacket with sky-blue piping to match his eyes. His appearance was an unfair advantage and Atem was suddenly struck with nerves at the prospect of facing down his rival out in the open rather than behind a screen. Chess was Kaiba’s duel. 

“I should have known it was you. You’re the only player in Domino who wouldn’t know my username,” Kaiba flipped a coin and wound up with white. He shook his head while setting up the board.

“I… don’t know what it means,” Atem ran his fingers through his hair and immediately regretted the gesture, knowing it would set his bangs free to run their wild course.

“It’s German,” Kaiba looked down at the pieces, but Atem could still catch a spot of blush from beneath his bangs. “For ‘chess dragon’.”

“That’s adorable!” Atem laughed.

“I-It’s not cute!” Kaiba spat, turning redder. “It’s my  _ title,  _ I  _ earned that!”  _

Atem knew. All the best grandmasters usually acquired a nickname along the way and Kaiba’s was uniquely well suited to him, but it was amusing to poke the hornet’s nest all the same.

“Why German then?” Atem suspected he could guess the answer.

“Because it rhymes...” he grumbled and Atem rolled with laughter again.

“I like it,” He smiled.

“You should have picked something with ‘kuriboh’ it would have been a better match for your skill level,” Kaiba’s spindly fingers were already hovering over king’s pawn. “Are we going to do what we came here for or should I go home?”

“I preemptively accept your resignation should you wish to tenure it,” Atem stared him down over the board.

“In your dreams, pharaoh.”

The opening dozen moves were all in the book and passed by in a blur, but Atem made one significant choice to toy with Kaiba.

“You can’t play Hyper-Accelerated Dragon, that’s  _ my  _ defense,” Kaiba’s thumb was busy wearing a hole in the skull of one pawn in the graveyard.

“You didn’t invent it,” Atem smirked. “And I will amend my strategy when someone invents The Magician’s Defense.”

“I’m surprised you haven’t already.”

“Perhaps I will.”

The middle game unfolded with Kaiba at the advantage, perhaps because he was playing white, perhaps because Atem’s heart had been thundering right out of his chest from the initial play onwards. Pawn captures pawn on g5. Kaiba scoffed.

“Don’t play stupid moves just to confuse me, you’re beyond that.”

“I believe you’ll find I play chess the same way I duel,” Atem crossed his arms in effort to still his nervous energy.

“Chess  _ is _ a duel,” Kaiba was concocting a new strategy with king to h8. A tense silence fell between them for several moves.

“Did you mean it?” Kaiba asked softly.

“Mean what?” 

“That it’s not a real rivalry if one player always loses,” He whispered. 

“Kaiba, I…” Atem hadn’t realized the casual dig had stuck so firmly, he hardly recalled saying it at all. “No, of course I didn’t mean that. I couldn’t have known I was talking to you. I was only trying to goan you into answering.”

The end of the match was closing in between them. Kaiba played rook to f3 threatening mate in two.

“You’ll always be my rival, Kaiba, in more than just duel monsters.” Atem chanced a gentle smile in his direction. Atem watched with no tinge of remorse when Kaiba sealed the mating with king to f2. “A masterful finish.”

Atem tipped his king and extended his hand across the board for a gentleman’s shake. Kaiba held on just a fraction longer than might have been polite.

“You think you’re good enough to be my chess rival, too?” Kaiba smirked. “That’s awfully presumptuous, pharaoh. Perhaps I already have a rival.”

“Then I will supplant him. You can only have one,” Atem held Kaiba’s gaze until the moment felt uncomfortably intimate.

“We should… do this again.” Kaiba nodded, tension written all over his face.

“Of course. As my rival, you are obligated not to decline my challenges. Are you usually free on Thursdays?”

Kaiba shifted in his seat, before turning away to look out at the lake instead of him.

“I… Have a match against Aronian in a few months… I was going to watch his match with Giri next week. You could…” Kaiba swallowed. “You could come over. If you wanted.”

Atem leaned into his line of sight with a sunlit smile.

“It’s a date.”

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Fun Fact: "classical dragon" and "hyper-accelerated dragon" are real chess openings!
> 
> ♡ Please leave your thoughts in the comments, I'm always striving to improve my writing! ♡
> 
>  _Formerly known as **talladeganights**_  
>  Find me on Tumblr: [RookSacrifice](https://rooksacrifice.tumblr.com/) (main) and [atembomb](https://atembomb.tumblr.com/) (Yu-Gi-Oh!)  
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